Book of Cricket

by Nick Hoult

The Telegraph is a newspaper committed to serious, beautifully-written sports coverage. Cricket editor Nick Hoult has collected some of the paper’s finest cricket writing in a treasure trove of archive material. Hoult’s selection covers many eras and styles of the earliest coverage from a century ago consists of evocative reportage, ranging from the deaths of W.G. Grace and Victor Trumper, the exploits of C.B. Fry, through to E. W. “Jim” Swanton’s magisterial distillations of Don Bradman’s Ashes performances. The book clearly exposes the trajectory of cricket writing –an evolution that, by the ‘70s, had segued into features, profiles and analysis. The Telegraph hosted the superb writing of Tony Lewis on, for example, Clive Lloyd’s all-conquering West Indians and the first World Cup. Then, into the ‘90s a more whimsical and personal cricket writing emerged from the likes of Martin Johnson, Mark Nicholas and Simon Hughes - covering both keenly fought Tests and the most bucolic of county matches at Maidstone. This book is a high quality anthology that will satisfy both fans of the modern game and those who are interested in its history.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book a long time back, and I thought that the stars have aligned and the time has come to read it.

The book contains selections from the cricket writings featured in The Daily Telegraph newspaper. The first piece featured is dated 30-Aug-1882 and the last piece featured is dated 31-Jul-2007. So that is selections from 125 years. So it is literally like reading the history of English cricket through the eyes of the cricket correspondents and writers from The Daily Telegraph. There are match reports of important matches, opinion pieces on cricket issues of the day, some of which had longterm and even historical consequences, essays on individual players, commentators, umpires and others involved in cricket.

One of my favourite parts of the book was the Obituaries. Though it is a sad occasion when an obituary is published, we get to learn more about the concerned player or person. Some of my favourites from this part were the essays on John Arlott, Frank Woolley, Brian Statham, Donald Bradman, Jack Hobbs. But all the pieces in this part were very beautiful.

The essay on John Arlott by Christopher Martin-Jenkins was very beautiful. Sharing an excerpt from it here.

******

"Stephen Hearst, the Austrian-born Controller of BBC Radio 3 during the 1970s, used to say that cricket commentary had become 'an art form'. If true, it is John Arlott who made it so. It may be said without fear of contradiction that he was the best cricket commentator there has ever been.

He not only had every necessary attribute, but others which lifted him into a class of his own. His voice was attractive and distinctive. He spoke with effortless authority on cricket because, though he never played it to any high standard, he had immersed himself in its history, laws, customs and characters. He could instantly place any event or incident he was describing into its proper perspective. Above all, he saw the game with a poet's emotions and a policeman's observant eye, and he described all he saw by thoughts and words which seemed always measured, never hurried. His vocabulary was that of an immensely well-read mind and his sentiments and judgments were tempered by a rare wisdom and humanity."

******

Arlott's commentary was pure poetry and he elevated cricket commentary to an art form. We'll never see another like him again.

Michael Henderson's wonderful tribute to Brian Statham has these beautiful lines –

"He belonged to a generation that had seen real hardship at first hand, and such experience tends to put things like cricket into a clearer perspective. When one considers the longevity of his career, and the peaks he scaled along the way, nobody can question his claim to greatness, though this modest man would never press his own case...Statham brought to the game that most precious of human qualities: glory, lightly worn. He added a verse to the eternal chorus, and must be remembered."

Here is a charming anecdote from Peter Fitzsimmons' tribute to Donald Bradman.

******

Of his later years, of course, far fewer stories are told simply because Sir Donald became such an enigmatic and distant figure that there are only a handful who were intimate enough with him to be able to tell any such stories. Nevertheless, I think I have a beauty. It was told to me by the great Australian batsman, Dean Jones, who positively swore on the head of his daughter it happened, and I have since been told that Merv Hughes also confirms its truth.

The scene is set at a Test match between Australia and the West Indies at Adelaide Oval back in February 1989. These were the days when the Windies were the greatest power the cricketing world had ever seen, the days when they used to select 11 fast bowlers in the team and a 12th man who was a fast bowler just to be on the safe side.

And it was into just such a furnace that the young bowler Mervyn Hughes walked with bat in hand. Figuring fortune favoured the brave, Hughes wielded the willow like an axeman his axe, and somehow after snicking fortutiously, connecting full-bloodedly, and missing entirely – he finished the day's play at 72 not out.

The tradition in Test cricket is that the batting side take a few beers into the fielding side's dressing-room afterwards, but not on this evening. Instead, Merv took an ice-box full of bottles, so keen was he to give the men of the Windies the full blow-by-blow account of every run he'd made. So it was that half-an-hour later, Jones – who himself had contributed 216 – and Hughes and several other Australian players were in the Windies dressing-room, when a sudden hush fell upon the gathering.

They looked to the door and there was Sir Donald Bradman himself, being ushered into the room by several South Australian cricket officials. The Don had expressed a desire to meet this mighty team, and now here he was.

For the next 15 minutes or so, the great man was introduced to the visiting players, with each West Indian standing up well before Sir Donald got to their position on the bench. Then, when their time came, they warmly shook his hand and had a few words.

This all proceeded splendidly until Sir Donald got to the last man on the bench, Patrick Patterson – the fastest bowler in the world at that time. So the story goes, not only did Patterson not stand, he simply squinted quizzically up at the octogenarian. Finally, after some 30 seconds of awkward silence, Patterson stood up, all two metres of pure whip-cord steel of him, and looked down at the diminutive Don.

"You, Don Bradman!?!" he snorted. "You, Don Bradman?!?! I kill you, mun! I bowl at you, I kill you! I split you in two!"

In reply, Sir Donald, with his hands on his hips, gazed squarely back at Patterson and calmly retorted: "You couldn't even get Merv Hughes out. You'd have no chance against me, mate!""

******

There was a beautiful piece about four Yorkshire legends. They were Fred Trueman, Brian Close, Ray Illingworth, and Geoffrey Boycott. They all accomplished great things and left their impact on the game. But they all hated each other 😄 At some point, Brian Close and Ray Illingworth left Yorkshire and went and played and captained other counties. But the mutual hate between them continued 😄🙈 Someone had an idea that they should get these four together for a nice nostalgic conversation and also pose for a portrait. The reasoning was that all the fights happened a long time back and they can all let bygones be bygones. The surprising thing was that the meeting went well, with Illingworth and Close sipping coffee together chatting about old times and Boycott sharing old anecdotes about Trueman. During the 1980s, Ray Illingworth and his supporters tried removing Geoffrey Boycott from the Yorkshire team. Boycott's supporters rose as one, voted out the Yorkshire committee and ousted Illingworth. It was the cricket equivalent of a bloodbath. But now our two protagonists were sitting together and sipping tea and talking nostalgically about old times, as if nothing had happened. That piece was one of my favourites and it made me smile. Out the four of them, I loved Fred Trueman, Brian Close, and Geoffrey Boycott. I hated Ray Illingworth. But Ray Illingworth was the best captain out of the four, I think. So though I hated him, his teammates probably loved him 😊🙈

Many of the important happenings in English cricket is covered in the book. The start of the one day game, the Packer series, the start of the use of helmets, the abolition of the Amateur-Professional distinction, the Basil d'Oliveira affair, the 1981 Headingley test also known as Botham's test, the 2005 Ashes, the start of T20 cricket, and many others. Most of the legends of the game are featured. I learnt a lot from the initial parts in which cricket from the late 19th century and the early 20th century was featured.

The Bodyline series is covered in quite detail. I was surprised that one of my favourites, Percy Fender, who still holds the record for the fastest first class century in terms of minutes, wrote an article supporting Bodyline bowling. I felt sad reading that, but I still love Percy, he is a cool guy. There was a beautiful piece by Michael Parkinson about his meeting with Harold Larwood in Sydney. They were joined by Bill O'Reilly and Jack Fingleton, Larwood 's rivals during the Bodyline series, who later became his friends. The Bodyline series was the first time when bowlers bowled to hit and hurt the batsman rather than taking his wicket. The English team did this to neutralize the Australian batting, especially Don Bradman. There have been occasional intimidating bowling before this series, but it wasn't used as a strategy like this before. The England captain Douglas Jardine employed this strategy with three of his fastbowlers, Harold Larwood, Bill Voce, and Bill Bowes. Larwood was the fastest of the three, and he was the one who inflicted the maximum damage. In one match, the Australian captain Bill Woodfull got hit on the heart and collapsed on the pitch, and later when the England manager Plum Warner went to the Australian dressing room to enquire about his health, Woodfull replied, "Mr.Warner, there are two teams playing out there, and only one of them is playing cricket." During the series, the England team, the English press, and even the English cricket board and MCC defended the Bodyline tactics as legitimate. But after the English team returned back from the tour, at some point, the cricketing public turned against this. The English cricket board wanted to save face and find a scapegoat and so asked Harold Larwood to apologize publicly for the way he bowled. Larwood refused. He said that he did what his captain Douglas Jardine asked him to do. Larwood was never picked for the England team again, though he was in the prime of his career. At some point he retired and started a shop. That is where Jack Fingleton, his Australian rival during the Bodyline series found him. Fingleton asked him whether he'd be interested in moving to Australia and one thing led to another and Larwood moved to Sydney and became Australian and his erstwhile Australian rivals Jack Fingleton and Bill O'Reilly became his best friends. All this is told beautifully in Michael Parkinson's essay.

I loved Mark Nicholas' piece on David Gower when Gower retired, and also his obituary on Malcolm Marshall. Malcolm Marshall was one of the greatest fastbowlers in cricket history. He died quite young, when he was just 41. Five West Indies captains carried his coffin during his funeral. I cry everytime I think of that. Marshall is famous in India because when he toured India as part of the West Indies team in 1983-84, in the flat Indian pitches he bowled so fast that the Indian batsmen had no answers to his bowling. At one point during the Kanpur test in that series, he had knocked out the top Indian batsmen before the day's play ended, and the newspaper headline the next day read, "Marshall Law in Kanpur".

One of the things I enjoyed reading was about the famous record partnership of 411 runs that Peter May and Colin Cowdrey had against the West Indies. I'd heard of this before, but it was nice to read about it. An interesting thing was that Peter May was batting on 285 when he declared England's innings. He was the England captain and if he'd taken a few more overs to score those 15 runs and make a triple hundred, I don't think anyone would have blamed him. But he didn't do that. He declared when he was batting on 285, and tried to push for a win. I've seen captains declare the innings when someone else was batting on a score like this – for example Michael Atherton declared the innings when Graeme Hick was batting on 98, and Rahul Dravid declared the innings when Sachin Tendulkar was batting on 194. In recent times, I remember Pat Cummins declaring the innings when Usman Khawaja was batting on 195. In Khawaja's case, the captain and the team talked to him about it, and Khawaja requested the captain to go ahead with the declaration. But captains declaring the innings when their own milestone is a short distance away is very rare. What Peter May did was amazing. He put the team first. He was a great leader and a great captain.

One of the things I looked forward to, while reading the book, was reading the pieces by E.W.Swanton. Swanton was a longtime cricket correspondent of The Telegraph and he was legendary in cricket circles. I've heard about him but have never read his pieces before. So it was wonderful to read his pieces and essays featured in this book and enjoy his beautiful writing. There was also a beautiful tribute to Swanton by Ted Dexter which I loved reading. I also loved Tony Lewis' articles, they were very charming. Michael Parkinson's pieces were filled with his love for cricket. Michael Henderson's pieces were beautifully written, though he was continually critical of the English cricket team, whatever they did. Sometimes, in retrospect, we know that he was wrong, and it was fun to read those pieces.

There were also things which were missing in the book, important matches and events which were not featured. In defence of the editor, it is hard to cover everything in a book. The editor has to make a selection and he has to leave many things out. Unfortunately, I felt that a few important things were missing. For example, a couple of Viv Richards' innings, his then world record score of 189 (not out) in a one day match, and his fastest test hundred off 56 balls were both missing in the book. I was surprised at that. I don't think Viv Richards' triple century for Somerset which he scored in a day was featured either. One more important miss I felt was Graham Gooch's triple century in the Lord's test against India. At that point, triple centuries in tests were rare and in nearly two decades no one had scored one. A triple century in a test by an English batsman had probably not been made since Len Hutton's days many decades back. So it was a very rare thing. It was very surprising that this anthology missed that. One last thing that I have to mention is Michael Atherton's 185 (not out) against South Africa. It is one of the greatest innings played in a test match. In my opinion, it is up there with Kim Hughes hundred in the Boxing Day test against the West Indies in 1981 when he went all guns blazing, Allan Border's 90-odd and a century in the same match against the West Indies in which he dragged his team past the finish line for a draw, and the daddy of them all, my favourite Stan McCabe's 187 in the Sydney test during the Bodyline series, the likes of which we'll never see again. They were all brilliant exhibitions of the art of batsmanship against terrifying fastbowling. Atherton mentions his knock in passing, in one of his own articles, but I'd have loved to read a longer essay on that.

But these are minor quibbles. What is featured in the book is beautiful. It is 411 pages of pure pleasure. If you are a cricket fan and love cricket history, this book is a must read.

One last thing. This is about the cover. It features a photo of the dressing room in the middle of a match. One of the players is biting his nails because the tension is high because of what is happening in the field. I love this picture. The player biting his nails is none other than Ted Dexter, who was affectionately known as 'Lord' Ted during his playing days. He was typically described as confident and regal and imperious, and so seeing him biting nails makes me smile 😊

Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Do you like cricket anthologies?

[Timothy Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my treasured possessions is a modest looking, staple-bound book, with a rough, wartime-look to its cover, hiding glossy inside pages. On the cover is a simple, silhouette of a stylish batsman set against a red circle within a green one, all on a yellow background. Entitled The Test Matches of 1956, it contains EW Swanton’s captivating and always instructive daily reports of that year’s Ashes series. Through its pages, as a young boy, I relived the series ‘day-by-day’, as if finding out from the newspaper each morning what had transpired, just as many did in those days before ball-by-ball commentary. Through it I acquired a taste for the authenticity and immediacy of contemporary reports, especially of cricket matches.

So when I saw this book going for a song in a charity shop, I did not hesitate. Nick Hoult has selected cricketing stories as they appeared in The Daily Telegraph between 1882 and 2007. There are seven chapters, the first covering 1882-1933 (culminating in bodyline), the second 1934-1959 (ending with Surrey’s era of domination) and the rest in decades starting with the 1960s. Each chapter begins with an introduction setting the scene for that era. The called-up team of writers includes Percy Fender, Martin Johnson, Tony Lewis, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Howard Marshall, Michael Parkinson, Derek Pringle, Tim Rice, EW Swanton and JJ Warr.

We are so used to reading of 19th and early 20th century cricket through the lens of history, as if in black and white footage, that contemporary reports stand out startlingly in their Technicolor immediacy. The famous England-Australia match at The Oval in 1882 comes alive as we read without embarrassment of “the Colonials” and quaintly of the Australian victors being “warmly cheered by a vast crowd”. Appropriately, Jonny Bairstow’s dozy run out at Lord’s in 2023 had its parallel in this match, when one “Mr Grace” ran out an Australian who wrongly presumed the ball to be dead. There is a very modern feel, too, to the description of another run out effected by an injured fielder passing the ball to another player to throw in and so surprise the batsman.

I was taken aback to read of a match between London County and the West Indies as early as 1900; saddened to read even in 1903 of a cricketing suicide (Michael Atherton's moving 2003 article on the subject is included); intrigued to read how famous cricketers were viewed in their obituaries (from WG Grace to Fred Trueman); surprised to read how bodyline bowling in 1933 was wholeheartedly supported by both reporters and players. How refreshing to read detailed accounts of county games, not just Test matches, and of the crowds that thronged to them. I did not expect the report of Hutton’s record 364 at The Oval in 1938 to be spent fuming about the ‘farce’ of a timeless test on a flat wicket. Letters to the editor are here too, some puzzling over how much attention was paid to cricket in the papers.

Hitting fast forward, it was interesting to read EW Swanton’s account of Sussex’s win in the first “Knock-out Cup”—the Gillette Cup—in 1963 and his unexpected assessment: “Nothing is better to see than the ball hit hard and often when the conditions allow; but this ‘instant cricket’ is very far from being a gimmick and there is a place in it for all the arts of cricket, most of which are subtle ones.” Mind you, Gillette Cup matches were 60-over matches—plenty of room for subtlety there. I wonder what EW Swanton would have made of T20, that cuckoo in the nest of first class cricket. Michael Atherton gave it a thumbs up at its birth in 2003, making some thoughtful arguments in its favour.

My one gripe—and it is quite a big one—is that there is no attempt (apart from a few comments in each chapter’s introduction) to give the pieces any context. Headlines are frequently omitted and we are often plunged into the middle of a cricket match without the slightest idea of what is going on or followed: no mention of the score at the start or close of play and never a scorecard. This is, I think, a serious omission that detracts significantly from the book. We miss so much through not knowing the context, sometimes puzzling even to work out what match is being described.

The modern sports writer is expected to fill column inches even when there was no action to report on or anticipate and that is reflected here too. There is much more than match reports: issues are discussed, lives are remembered and policies are considered. There’s even room for a couple of completely dud attempts at humorous imagination.

Nevertheless, anyone who loves cricket will enjoy this book, but they will benefit all the more if a good proportion of its time span coincides with their own.

[Harish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in time.